Unless she had, as she had so vehemently denied, taken the law into her own hands and ended Ray Strickland’s stalking once and for all.
“Wanda?” Dana sounded perplexed.
“Sorry.” Wanda realized she hadn’t answered. “He goes back on Monday. For another week. Then he’ll be home awhile until September rolls around. I’ll sure be glad to have him here.” She met Dana’s eyes. “You should be, too.”
Dana didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I can’t involve the police in my situation. You have no idea how far Roy’s reach extends and how many people he’s paid off to look the other way.”
Wanda was offended and knew it showed. “Kenny wouldn’t sell you out to anybody.”
“I’m sorry, I know that. I’m not questioning Ken’s honesty. But one cop gets involved, others down the line have to, especially with Roy going underground.”
“I haven’t told Kenny, and I don’t intend to.” Wanda didn’t add that she had asked Ken to check on Pete, and now that he was back at the station today and tomorrow, she hoped he would have time to.
“I appreciate it, Wanda. You know I do. I’m sure you don’t like keeping secrets from your husband.”
“You go on now. I’m ready to go myself. I’ll lock up.”
After Dana left, she did just that. The back door had a sturdier lock now, one Frieda Mertz would never be able to thwart with a credit card. Wanda was ashamed she hadn’t replaced it first thing before she moved in, her being a cop’s wife and all. She figured if Ken had been around more, he would have insisted.
But Ken was going to be home tonight. She smiled, and even though nobody was there to see it, she wiggled her penciled eyebrows coquettishly.
An hour later she wasn’t wiggling anything. She was looking at the report an exhausted Ken had handed her just before his cell phone rang. She’d read it while he had one of his normal grunting, one-word-answer conversations with somebody at the station. The facts about one Peter Knight were scribbled in Ken’s slanty handwriting, since checking out Pete wasn’t exactly aboveboard.
“Nothing wrong with him I could find,” Ken said, slipping his phone back in his pocket. “A stand-up guy.”
“But it says here Pete was a cop.”
“I thought you already knew that.”
“He told Tracy he was military.”
Ken took the notes and pointed. “That, too. Army National Guard in North Dakota. Weekend warrior. Military police. He put in twenty years before he retired.”
“Why didn’t he tell Tracy he was a police detective, too?”
“Maybe he thought it didn’t matter. What’s worrying you?”
Wanda couldn’t tell Ken the truth. Not without using Dana’s name. “I just don’t like that he didn’t mention it, that’s all. I mean, guys who don’t come clean about simple things are capable of hiding others.”
“He doesn’t have a blemish on his record. Not anywhere. Started young and worked his way up. Now he’s just here enjoying the rewards.” Ken grinned boyishly. “Which I’m hoping to do after I get back this evening.”
“Back?”
“Sorry, but they’ve got a guy in custody who might be the one who broke into that jewelry store over on Tanner. Remember? I was working on the follow-up before the Georgia opportunity. But I’ll just be gone a couple of hours, and it’s still early. When I get back, if you don’t feel like making dinner, I’ll take you out. Anywhere you want to go.”
She was too busy considering what she’d learned about Pete to be offended. Besides, she knew better than to protest. Ken was so much happier at his job than he’d been last year that she sure wasn’t going to interfere.
“I’ll see you when you get back,” she said. “We’ll figure out what to do then.”
He kissed her goodbye. She waited until she heard his car drive away, then she headed out the door to find the other women and discuss what they should do next.
Dana’s uneasiness was growing. She had come to Happiness Key for two reasons. She’d fulfilled the first before she and Lizzie moved in, but fulfilling the second seemed increasingly impossible. She was superstitious enough that speaking ill of the dead was forbidden, but as always, she wished that the man whose ashes were now eternally a part of the bay and gulf he had loved, had never tantalized her with the promise of a better life for Lizzie.
Had he not, she wouldn’t be in this place with women she was, against her better judgment, beginning to regard as friends. She wouldn’t be in